Imagine sitting center stage as the curtains slowly draw back revealing a packed audience at your first opera production. Opera is a space that traditionally appeals to the wealthy white elite so imaging the current rolling back and you know, before anyone has heard your voice, they have already taken note of your dark skin. Feeling anxious in this moment would be completely understandable, but for Shyheim Selvan Hinnant, a 19-year-old VCU Performance student, being successful in this space is his dream.

Hinnant has in just two years proved he’s able to overcome racial concerns as he wows audiences with his operatic singing talent, and it seems to be leading to a lucrative career in classical music.

Shy found his love for music growing in singing in his church’s choir and a musical household. He was first exposed to his mother’s favorite R&B artists like Sade, Lauryn Hill, and Jaheim. He knew, especially after coming out as gay, that singing and songwriting is what he wanted to do.

In high school, he wrote and recorded his first song called “Cloud Nine,” that began his venture into music making. Upon coming to VCU, he discovered Richmond’s DIY art scene and home venue circuit. There he got his start in the culture with local rapper and friend Alfred, performing his own music outside of his scholastic requirements.

He began making R&B music and performing using the name Shy Lennox, taking the name from the Shakespeare’s Lennox from MacBeth. He launched a Soundcloud account and quickly made a name for himself performing at venues like The Camel, Soul. Eil, and Witch Mountain. Shy shares many of the same musical tastes as his mother, however he favors a wide range of tunes depending on his mood and the moment.

“My mother introduced me to a lot of stuff, but I listened to other stuff too. I had an Avril Lavigne phase for a while,” he joked. “It was more [about] sounds, if it was a good sound to me, I’d fuck with it.”

His diverse ear for music combined with his love of performing – this lead to him exploring other opportunities to perform different types to music. This curiosity lead Shy to be a featured vocalist in the VCU jazz orchestra as well as joining the VCU Choir with whom he sang Beethoven’s Ninth with the Richmond Symphony.

His first dive into classical music came when he participated in a scene production put on by VCU Music in 2016. Shy portrayed Porgy alongside VCU Music student Jailyn Brown in the 1935 classic Porgy and Bess, the first opera to feature an entirely Black cast. That, for many of his friends and loved one, was the first time they’ve heard him perform classical music.

“It was the first time people heard me and say “Shy you could be an opera singer,” said Hinnant. “That to me was like “whoa” because, like, you don’t hear about too many Black boys going into opera. So when I realized that I had the potential to really do I switched my major to performance.”

With that affirmation, Shy decided to fully immerse himself in the classical music world. He changed his major from Music Education to Performance concentrating in Opera Studies. He began studying the classics opera and developed a love for composers like Giacomo Puccini and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, even playing the role Figaro in scenes of the famous production, The Marriage of Figaro.

Through his studies of operatic singing Shy identified with Black opera singers like Leontyne Price, Jessye Norman, and Lawrence Brownlee, all of whom found success singing music that previously were saved for white vocalists. Leontyne Price is credited as being one of the first African American’s to be featured at the Metropolitan Opera. Price, particularly is someone Hinnant counts as one of his greatest role models.

“I look up to singers like [that],” said Hinnant. “I want to be as world changing as her. Leontyne could sing anything regardless of her skin color and she was given roles that weren’t given to people of her skin color before.”

Hinnant, after hearing Leontyne’s rendition of Puccini’s Chi il bel sogno (di Doretta), knew that he could go beyond what was expected of Black vocalist. He continued to work and perform within the classical music world despite often being the only Black person in these spaces.

“It’s fucked up, the whiteness that comes in classical music spaces, that’s why The Spiritual is so important,” said Hinnant. “The Spiritual, which we used to call “Negro Spirituals” were made for Black singers and they are our time to share [stories] with the world. That’s our classical music.”

But outside of that, Hinnant wants to show people that classical roles aren’t just for white people.

“I feel like the way to break down that white-Black binary is showing that Black people can do anything that white people can do,” he said.

Shy’s fearlessness in entertaining and performing in these spaces comes from his tenacious work ethic and the enormous amount of self-confidence instilled by his mother from a very young age.

But as he works to break down barriers in the Opera world, he continues to realize the struggles Black queer people face and he’s had a difficult time reconciling the two. His family would use the “F” slur. It wouldn’t be directed at him, but that didn’t make it any less painful to hear. That created an aversion to coming out, though thankfully, when he did come out to his mother, she embrace him unconditionally.

“When you’re Black and queer like. that’s just the worst thing to be in the world,” he said. “Even though I haven’t been told my whole life that it’s okay to be queer, I have been told that it’s okay to be me. After I got affirmation from my mom and I knew that she was okay [with me] being gay, I didn’t need anything else… I could conquer the worldnow.”

And conquered he has. Through his hard work and the backing of VCU Music, Hinnant has succeeded with opera singing as his R&B alter ego, Shy, racks up thousands of listens on his soundcloud account.

This upcoming summer Shy will study opera in Atlanta and at the end of June he’ll participate in a production of Carmen by composer George Bizet, making it his first production outside of VCU Music.

The support Hinnant has garnered is an acknowledgement of his passion and drive to succeed, and it burns so bright that no one can deny it or hold him. He feels no animosity being in spaces where he stands out because of his skin color because when he sings he proves that he has earned his place.

“As soon as people see me, they see my color and that’s fine. I can’t change that. But when people hear my voice, they see the color of my voice. So rather than, ‘that is a Black boy singing opera’ I become ‘that is a person who is singing opera well,’” said Hinnant. “Some days I practice til two in the morning and pass out when I get home because I really just want to get better. When it’s finally time to enter those spaces, I’m showing people the work that I’ve done and I want them to appreciate that.”

In an industry and in a society that so often doesn’t allow queer Black people visibility; Hinnant and Shy both shine.

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